"Two biases of memory, however, tend to enhance the illusory nature of our retrospective “understanding” of our own and others’ lives. The first is that we tend to overestimate specific events relative to general categories of events. The second is that we tend to recall specific events and to interpret them in ways that make sense out of a current situation—“sense” in terms of our cultural and individual beliefs about stability and change in the life course. Thus, memories, which appear to be beyond our control as if we are observing our previous life on a video screen, are like anecdotes in that they are often “chosen for a purpose.” The result is that they will tend to reinforce whatever prior beliefs we have, just as anecdotes tend to reinforce the points they are meant to illustrate."

“At the very least, irrationality per se can be challenged. In contrast, acting irrational because we believe that other people are so irrational that their irrationality cannot be challenged leads to no challenge at all.”

“Believing you’re good at something just because you do it—without any information that you’re doing it well—is indeed irrational.”

“Many people operate as if there are two separate and equal sources of information—the self and others, where the number of others is irrelevant. The result is a “truly” false-consensus effect in the context of knowing one’s own plus a certain number of others’ responses.”

“True scientific demonstration involves convincing an observer who is outside the process, particularly one not deeply and emotionally enmeshed in it.”

“The Milgram studies led to a great deal of criticism from other academic and professional psychologists. Ironically, the major focus of this criticism was that the studies would “destroy faith in psychologists as authorities,” to which Milgram’s response was “Fine!”

“The world as postulated by the recovered-memory theorists is not an impossible one—just an extraordinarily unlikely one.”